The Loot Pile: Negating Orb of Paranormal Erasure (NOPE)

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#1

NEGATING ORB OF PARANORMAL ERASURE (NOPE)
Magical item

This fist-sized neodymium-iron alloy sphere is polished to a mirror shine. The Orb can be placed in contact with a creature or object in the grasp of a concentrating wielder to undo magically the most recent instance of EFFORT employed against it, within a period of one minute (10 rounds) after the event.

A NOPE will not restore life to a permanently dead creature, but it will revive a dying creature if reversal of the last damage EFFORT taken brings the creature from negative hit points back to positive hit points; it can restore consciousness to a stable but unconscious creature in similar fashion.

The Orb also happens to be a particularly strong magnet, which can make it cumbersome to carry and employ in certain circumstances or surprisingly dynamic to use in others.

Notes:

  1. Example—After missing a strike of his own, a party’s fighter takes grievous damage from an orc’s spear, totaling 8 hit points. The fighter’s ally, a mage with the NOPE sees the spear hit home from a distance, and takes a turn to close the gap at a dash. The wounded fighter misses his counterattack as the orc lancer continues to harry him, failing to connect with a follow-up thrust but forcing the warrior backward, badly shaken by his wounds. The mage dashes again, now adjacent to the fighter, who pounds the orc in retaliation for the earlier hit. The orc wheels from the blow and tries to impale the unarmored spellcaster instead, but the mage’s Cloak of Aras billows out around him magically to parry the spear. The Mage reaches out with the Orb and taps it on the fighter’s bloody cuirass; the warrior instantaneously heals the 8 HP he lost two rounds previous, and, surging with power, he cleaves the orc through the clavicle and drops the tuskproud humanoid dead as the lancer issues a final throaty grunt. (If the orc had landed one of the interim blows on the fighter, only the more recent damage would have been erased by the NOPE.) The mage hurries over to the splintered wooden door on the ground by the north wall; with a touch of the Orb, the planks and pieces reassemble themselves back into the rickety locked door the orc had bashed in with a single mighty kick (one EFFORT roll) less than a minute before…
  2. Example—A Mage hanging back by the convoy of wagons to lob damage-dealing magic that helps her party, currently engaged in melee combat with some bandits, sees that a bandit Shadow has skulked up to one of the buckboards and is picking the lock on the party’s strongbox full of treasure, working the chest for a full heart of EFFORT on his turn. She vaults into the wagon bed and taps the NOPE on the strongbox, and the lock tumblers magically rescramble, instantly undoing the thief’s work. Dumbfounded, the Shadow drops his thieves’ tools, leaps up next to the Mage, and swings wildly at her midsection in frustration, punching her in the gut for 2 HP. The Mage is not accustomed to taking body shots, but she grits her teeth through the pain and, hopped up on adrenaline, uses the NOPE as an effective bludgeon (but specifically NOT using its magic), scoring a critical hit (D6+D12) for 10 points of damage, exactly enough to knock out the bandit. She NOPEs herself to restore full health, ties the Shadow up, and, seeing her friends have chased the other bandits away into the woods, decides to NOPE the Shadow to save his life and return him to consciousness for interrogation.
  3. Example—An evil Priestess continues her summoning ritual at her altar, now 18 points of MAGICAL EFFORT into her dark prayers, needing two hearts (20 points) to summon a flight of winged demons to hunt down the adventurers infiltrating her cultist temple. Unbeknownst to her, the party’s stealthy Shadow creeps up behind the Priestess undetected; instead of bonking her in the head, he opts to tap the NOPE on the altar, and the last 4 points of ritual MAGIC EFFORT are erased. She wheels and casts Swarm, and a conjured cloud of stinging bees deals him 6 points of damage. The Prietess hears the footsteps and shouts of the Shadow’s friends in the corridor outside her chamber, so she returns to her summoning ritual and adds another 5 points of EFFORT to her ritual, now at 19 points. His face and hands red with bee stings, the Shadow musters a recalcitrant grimace and bashes the NOPE down on the altar again, undoing her dark magic as the swarm continues to sting him for another 3 points of damage. Again the Priestess continues her incantation for 4 more points of effort, back up to 18, and again the Shadow nullifies her EFFORT with the NOPE as the bees sting him into unconsciousness. As he falls limp, the NOPE rolls across the marble floor until it comes to rest, drawn by attraction to the base of an iron candelabrum. The Priestess lets loose an unholy cackle as she draws a final breath to complete the summoning spell, but she rolls a 1, and her own bees sting her for 8 points, just as the party breaks down the door and makes quick work of her with a flurry of crossbow bolts and the Warrior’s well placed axe blade. They retrieve the NOPE and revive their brave fallen comrade, still swollen with bee stings but with his wits restored after his delaying action saved the day…
  4. It is possible to interpret with some flexibility “undo magically the most recent EFFORT employed,” either ruling that the last EFFORT applied, while undone, still stands to keep subsequent uses of the NOPE from reversing prior effort, or ruling that once EFFORT is undone, another use of the NOPE will act on prior EFFORT (in a LIFO stack) back one minute in time. I tend toward favoring the more stringent former interpretation, but I think it still works either way, and you can only go back 10 rounds from the current turn anyway.
  5. See what else is on top of the The Loot Pile.

#2

I wonder how this would work in Warpshell…particularly with Mechas.


#3

Good question. I’ve only used this item in an Alfheim one-shot so far.

I specifically limited the effect of the NOPE to undo only EFFORT by design, rather than actually rewinding time. It makes things that happen to you “unhappen.” It won’t keep you from falling into a pit trap, but it will instantly heal the broken leg you suffered from falling into it. If you fall onto poison spikes, you can undo the damage from that but not the fall, etc. The Orb’s real virtue is that it works without a STAT check, and this is also why I made sure to put in the bit about contact with both the target creature and a concentrating wielder; you don’t have to roll for it to function, but you can’t just throw it at things to undo damage or stick it to your buddy and let him wade off into battle alone to tank damage.

I think Mecha would be able to be “healed” as normal with the NOPE, even though the EFFORT done against them would have been damage to their structure rather than to biological tissue. Samey samey for the NOPE, IMHO.